


The Truth of the Matter

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Dyslexia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Newton Geiszler Has ADHD, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-War, so many things change, and still so many things stay the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not the First Meeting

Marshall Hansen stopped the clock, and the Shatterdome cheered. Soon, the world cheered with them. We, that is, Dr. Geiszler and I, were stunned.

In press interviews, Marshall Hansen told the reporters that without our help, that is, the help of Dr. Geiszler and myself, Gipsy Danger would never have passed through, never mind _sealed_ , the breach. He claimed he wanted to give credit where credit was due. And of course I wanted to be recognized for my work, my years of research and tireless calculation. I was hoping to name one of the algorithms I developed in mapping the throat of the breach after myself. Perhaps a little gauche, perhaps it was hubris to think of it that way, but I felt that I’d earned it.

I didn’t want to explain on international television that I’d initiated a _drift_ with a blasted _foetal kaiju_.

Luckily, and in fact even more unluckily, Newton, that is, Dr. Geiszler, was perfectly willing to explain it for me.  
I cringed to hear him do it. The way he put it sounded so pedestrian, so hackneyed and, honestly, unscientific, that I wanted nothing to do with it. However, it was expected if not necessary for me to accompany him to the press releases because— well, here. Listen to one for yourself. Not only is it running on endless repeat on every channel, but, here, I have it on my phone:

"Dude it was so cool, we were like, one minute, I’m getting chased by this baby kaiju, and dude, it totally ate this guy right in front of me, so just as I’m bending over and kissing my butt goodbye, my friends, it choked and keeled over, right there, umbilical wrapped around its neck and still all covered with kaiju placenta, which, yeah, is blue, by the way, big shocker. Though I was a little surprised to see that they were placental at all. It indicates that the way that the Masters— that’s what I call the race that sent them— birthed more of them by some kind of artificial insemination, being that they are all clones. Now, I know we’ve been referring to kaiju as male, all this time, whenever we didn’t use ‘it’, but I’m beginning to think that every individual we encountered was female, and that the genetic material necessary to impregnate them was synthesized in laboratory conditions to produce the drastic physiological differences we observed from kaiju to kaiju. Like, you know how one looked like a turtle and one looked like a crab, and one looked like a manic bat on steroids? Yeah, like, it’s mind-boggling, because we don’t have anything on Earth that expresses that much difference between individuals of the same species, except, you know, maybe us. Heh. Which, you know, is really interesting because—"

"The breach, Geiszler."

Lord I look tired in this clip.

"Dude. Seriously. I’m getting to that. I was going to say, it’s really interesting if you think about a sort of similarity between kaiju and people, because, like, jaeger pilots had to have this strong connection for the drift to work. Those of you who have the action figures might know that really successful jaeger pairs were, you know, like… Father and son, or brother and sister, or a married couple, or, you know, something like that. A bad connection would mean a bad drift, one that would result in a sort of feedback loop of memory, and one drift partner would get stuck on the other side of the neural handshake, depending, I guess, on whose memory was more prominent in the mind."

"Dr. Geiszler, if you please!"

"Cripes, man, you sound like my stats teacher in high school. I was saying, there’s this importance— I mean, there was, I guess— on compatibility of drift partners. But like, me and Hermann over here—"

Look, see what he does? He insists upon calling me by my given name, on television! And that’s not to speak of his deplorable grammar. The man supposedly has a doctorate, for pity’s sake.

"—were able to drift with a kaiju. Which means there’s a lot more similarity between us and them than you’d ever think possible, looking at them. Enough so that Hermann and me—"

_Doctor Gottlieb_ and _I_ , you great buffoon!

"—could access that kaiju’s memories. Well, actually, the collective consciousness of all the kaiju. They have kind-of a hive mind, so even though that particular kaiju had only spent minutes outside of the womb, we were able to get, like, an impression, of the primary directive, heh, of all kaiju… And that’s why we knew that the breach was— it was constructed to scan the kaiju going through it, and stop anything else from going through, because, this— this race, they uh, they send the kaiju, the, monsters, to uh… just keep killing the inhabitants of a planet so that they can move in, and they, uh, they-they-they did this before, not only here on Earth but to other planets, and we assume they were more successful there. The last time they came, it wiped out the dinosaurs, but it uh, they survive in environments we’d call polluted. So they waited some 65 million years before making another try at it, and we don’t know how much they’ve changed or improved in that time. If they can stand to wait 65 _million_ years before having another go, this is a race the likes of which we’ve only heard about in— in movies! Ancient creatures, either with incomprehensibly long life spans, or with highly specific goals spanning millennia. Basically, this is what they do, and I honestly don’t know what’s to stop them from trying again— Oh my god. They could try again! I— I need to go."

"Uh— That was Doctor Newton Geiszler, one of the two men responsible for the breakthrough that got Gipsy Danger into the breach. Doctor Gottlieb, would you care to make a statement?"

"Not really."

"What do you think about Doctor Geiszler’s apparent belief that the kaiju could return?"

"I do not wish to comment. Thank you."

But then of course some PR person working, I believe, for or with Raleigh Becket found me at my home, and urged me to make another television appearance, specifically to allay the fears of the public. She indicated to me that Newto— that is, Doctor Geiszler’s abrupt exit from that press conference you just watched caused significant public dissent, which “hurt her client’s interests”. According to her, prominent newscasters are or were making the claims that if the kaiju could come back, Mr. Becket and Miss Mori didn’t do a good enough job— that none of us did, and furthermore, that the Defense Corps program was an enormous waste of funds, taxpayer or otherwise, if they— that is, we— couldn’t finish what we started.

Mr. Becket has, as I’m sure you’re well aware, explained what he saw on the other side of the breach. He says he looked what Doctor Geiszler calls the ‘masters’ right in the eye before self-destructing Gipsy Danger. But, that there should only be six or seven of them is ridiculous. Even two-score wouldn’t make any sense; all the energy presumably expended on building and sending the kaiju through an atomic wormhole, not to speak of the effort put into the kaiju themselves, all to colonize new planets… for a handful of individuals? I suppose it is not outside the realm of possibility. And perhaps I have a hugely anthropocentric view of what space is needed for a species. For example, I am perfectly comfortable with the 44 square meters allotted to my studio flat, but perhaps each of them requires an entire blasted continent to itself.

If that is not the case, then perhaps there are more of them out there. It certainly seems more feasible that there are than that there aren’t.

Regardless, Miss Montessa convinced me to do another television interview, under threats of reporters coming to my home to get answers out of me.

You’ve probably seen what happened after that.

I don’t know how many people still spend time on BlueTube now that kaiju attacks aren’t happening every other week, but I’m sure the video is all over it.

That talk show host was all too willing to have me on his programme. I was honestly a bit put off by his enthusiasm. I wondered, why me. After all, he had Mr. Becket and Miss Mori on the show a scant week after their daring adventure. Certainly that was more exciting than an interview with _me_ could ever be.

Miss Montessa advised me to have a prepared statement, and not to ‘freak out’, as Doctor Geiszler did at that initial press conference. She said I should do my best to reassure the viewers that they were safe, and that the kaiju couldn’t come back. Even if it was a lie, she said.

I didn’t really know what to expect. I most assuredly did not expect the crowd, that is, the audience. Girls who could have been in high school holding up signs saying things “I Lieb Gottlieb”, “I’m a beLIEBer”, and, in white text on a black background, “gott lieb?” Frankly, it was embarrassing.

I didn’t expect the questions about my personal life, either, which is why I responded the way I did when he got to the real questions. I was taken aback; surprised. Honestly, one shouldn’t segue directly from ‘do you have a special lady in your life?’ to, ‘in your professional opinion, could the kaiju return?’.

Obviously, that sort of lead-in is designed to trip a body up, and I really don’t appreciate being interrogated.

I answered honestly, and said that there was a possibility. It isn’t my fault the general public doesn’t know the difference between possibility and probability. Outside the regular delineations of arithmetic, anything is _possible_. It is merely a matter of how improbable.

At the very least I _did_ mention that it had been sixty-five million years between their first attempt and their second, and that the human race didn’t even _exist_ when the kaiju first arrived. It wasn’t likely we’d exist in the same capacity, even one million years from now. Look at human culture a hundred years ago. Look at anthropological holotypes from three million years ago. Neither you nor I will be alive, unless the science fiction of my father’s youth comes true, in which case, it’s just as likely that the kaiju ‘masters’ are our own distant descendants from the far-off future, come to reclaim the Earth we destroyed, and remake it in their own image.

God help me, I’m beginning to sound like Doctor Geiszler.

The point is, I can’t be expected to lie when it comes to math and science. Numbers, after all, do not lie. We humans are so accustomed to uncertainty, to qualifiers and equivocations, that the bare, simple, truth of mathematics is mind-boggling. Language is full of exceptions and contradictions, and of course, no scientific inquiry conducted by humans is without flaws. We can count only on reproducible results, and the likelihood that an experiment conducted under the same conditions will turn out in the same way. It is as I said before: we can deal only in probability, and that, of course, is math.

I tried to explain that. I tried to explain that it is also theoretically possible to put your hand through a solid object, in the very very very unlikely event that all of the empty space in that object’s atomic structure— atoms are mostly empty space, you know— happened at that moment to be concentrated where your hand rested against the object. But, that kind of occurrence is so monstrously unlikely it may as well _be_ impossible.

The ‘public’ won’t listen to reason. I very much wonder if all the school teachers gave up on teaching the next generation when those behemoths started attacking us.

If that is the case then the future may still be well and doomed despite our work to save it. I was asked for my opinion as a scientist, and when I gave just that, people were not at all willing to accept or understand it.

I ask you, what fault is it of mine that people are more given to hysterics than rational thinking? Should I be expected to nursemaid them through every thought, hold their hands like feeble infants until they draw a conclusion?

In any case, I’m not sure these meetings are entirely necessary. I understand Marshall Hansen assigned you to us, that is, Doctor Geiszler and myself, to ensure that drifting with the kaiju did not have any lasting psychological effects. It has, however, been quite some time, and I’m not suffering any repercussions as yet. I respect that you are a doctor, but if I am not exhibiting any symptoms, perhaps I never shall. Perhaps you can sign off on me now, and we can both return to our lives?

No, I thought not. I appreciate that you have a job to do, and that you mean to see it through. Nevertheless, our hour is up, and I shall take my leave.

Until next Thursday, then, Doctor Gurumurthi.


	2. We've Done This Before

Look, this is all pretty weird for me. I went back to the lab at the Shatterdome yesterday and there was this whole work crew sawing all the pipes out. My Cantonese is okay for ordering food and asking directions to the train station, but any further than that and I’m S.O.L., and plus, I couldn’t get them to stop because they had a work order all signed in triplicate and everything.

Last I heard, there was talk of turning the ‘Dome into a World Heritage Site, and making the whole place into some kinda museum, but like, in the meantime, all my equipment is still in there, and where the hell else am I going to find one, space, and two, that kind of precision equipment? I can’t do what I want to do with just a microscope and a Bunsen burner, you know.

And like, I’m still trying to do _work_ but it’s like, there’s too much politics now and I can’t get anything done. During the war I could pretty much do anything. Like, yeah, Pentecost might not give me clearance or whatever but like, if I could figure out how to do it myself, it was kinda, do it now and apologize later. Now I can’t even blow my nose in the ‘Dome without a notarized permissions document.

And I dunno if that’s Hansen’s influence or the Chinese government taking over the site, or what, but I mean, do people think I’m just gonna give up on my research, now? Like, those are people who don’t get it, you know? I worked really hard and I can’t give up now. I can’t.

And if I try to go home, all I can think about is going back to the ‘Dome and getting back into it. Like okay, the Corps set me up with accommodations for as long as I’m stuck here in Hong Kong, and I get that it could be a while because like, the passport administration was destroyed, along with, oh, I dunno, sixty percent of the city. I get that. So I took their docket and added to it and shilled out for the swankiest hotel I could find, like, the lobby is a donut around this huge tropical fish tank that’s three stories high and must be like, a hundred thousand gallons. It’s crazy. And everything is red velvet and brass and like, white, modern-y Ikea looking furniture? There’s a remote control for the window shades. It’s swank as hell. In fact, it’s so swank I’m beginning to think it’s owned by the mob. There’s an elevator that goes through the fish tank, and a revolving restaurant on top. The outdoor lights change color at night so the whole building is a light show. Isn’t that nuts? The room is crazy nice, too.

But I can’t stand to be there and part of me is like, yeah, you know, I deserve a break, but the louder part of me is like, no, dude, you’ve been working for this your whole life, why stop now?

Cuz, like, I’ve wanted to be a scientist for pretty much ever, since like, watching Ninja Turtles with my bearded dragon and being like, my bearded dragon would be such a cool mutant ninja. Probably better than a turtle because of the flexible spine and the claws and the prehensile tongue, the replacement teeth, more mobile rib cage which would allow him to better use environments for hiding, and all that stuff. I wrote little stories about it, about being the mad scientist that created the potion that turned Scully the bearded dragon into the Scaled Scull, and I spelled it with a ‘c’, not because I was being clever but because I thought that’s how ‘skull’ was spelled.

Do you know Gottlieb criticizes my spelling and handwriting _constantly_ , and heaves like, the _biggest_ sigh when I take out my dictaphone? It’s really fucking frustrating! Like, one time, we were both in the lab, right, and he’s writing on the chalkboard behind me, and the chalk is just, tak-tak-tak-tak-TAK-tak-TAK-tak-tak, like that. And I’m thinking, MAN, that’s really annoying. But yeah, okay, that’s how he works. So I put on some headphones, and I’m trying to write down a series of measurements of the pH levels of a series of tissue samples, and then suddenly my chair is shaking and he’s knocking against the wheel with his cane. So I take off the headphones and I’m like, “What, why you gotta hit my chair, what, WHAT.” and he says he’s called my name six times already and I’m like, I couldn’t hear you, and he’s all, “Well, _obviously,_ ” and I’m like, “What do you want,” and he’s like, “I can hear the noise coming out of your headphones from across the room,” and I’m like, “Okay, you could just ask me to turn my music down,” and he’s like, “You couldn’t hear me if I did,” and then he looks over my shoulder and says “My god how do you even read chickenscratch like that? ‘Aksidentaly’? ‘Resurch’? ‘Unsesesful?’ I was under the impression that you held a PhD in something.”

And you know something? That hurt, it really did. I said, “You act like the measure of a person is their spelling.”

And then I said something I probably shouldn’t have.

I said, “That’s like measuring a person by how fast they can run up stairs.”

And I feel bad about it, I really do. But, like, you’d think he of all people would be more sensitive about that kind of thing!

It’s like my parents, you know? Like, my mom takes every opportunity to tell people I have a doctorate. And yeah, like, she’s always saying how proud she is of me, how much I’ve achieved— even before the whole, y’know, _saving the world_ thing. But like, maybe it’s just some kinda paranoia talking but I really feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there, or like a, ‘all things considered’. Like, I’ll never be good _enough_ , you know?

What else can I do, I got a PhD in biology, minored in organic chemistry, pioneered the field of K-science, and yeah, saved the world. What else is there? Is it because I’m not married? She won’t shut up about my older brother Dalton, and his wife, and his kids, and blah, blah, blah.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my little nieces. Haven’t seen them except on Skype in… shit, a long time.

I don’t even know how old they are, holy shit.

Fuck, I feel awful. I don’t even know if I sent them a Christmas card last year.

I know they sent me one.

Jesus.

I mean I guess I Skyped with them all on Christmas Day, and it was cute seeing my nieces in their Christmas nighties with ribbons in their hair, showing me cookies they decorated.

'Course my mom had to ruin it when I told her I was thinking about doing like a teleconference talk at the Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity. I hadn't even started writing a proposal or anything, I was just thinking about it. And I only mentioned it in passing, like, this is what I'm up to, this is what I'm thinking about for the future, and do you know what she says to me?

"But you’re not really disabled," she says. And I’m like, "What do you mean?" and she’s like, "Just what I said," and I’m like, "Seriously mom? You sent me to a special needs high school, but I’m ‘not really disabled’?" and she says, "Well it’s not like you’re in a wheelchair."

And I’m like— I don’t even know what to do with that. She says she thinks wheelchair users would be really offended if they heard me using that word and I’m like, what the hell? Like, I don’t say it, but I feel like, yeah, okay, able person, go ahead and assume what disabled people should feel. But okay, whatever.

I told her I didn’t want to talk about it on fucking _Christmas_ , but she wouldn’t let it go, and went on about how I really shouldn’t use that word to describe myself and I told her not to put her shame on me and she said she wasn’t ashamed and I said it really felt like she was and then my younger sister— Everett, the second-youngest— took the iPad and was like, she’s only saying that because she loves you and doesn’t want you to use it as a crutch, and I’m like, I call bullshit, okay? Because, I’ve worked so damn hard to get where I am, and I’m the only one of my siblings that went for a doctorate, and are they proud of me? It really doesn’t feel like it.

I was on Skype with them not too long ago, actually, and my mom said that my grandmother called, and I was like, oh really, you know, she calls all the time it’s not unusual, and my mom’s like, yes. Apparently some lady in my grandma’s book club was like, Bernice, was that your grandson screaming on television? And she had to say that yes, it was, and I dunno, my mom didn’t finish the story but I get the feeling they’re embarassed of me.

Again.

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop working all the time. I mean, yeah, I’m really interested in it, and that’s one thing, but like. Maybe I’m still trying to get my parents’ approval, and that’s why I’m still pretty much sneaking into my own lab, even after everything.

Anyway I only just got the samples I requested from the EPA, so it wouldn’t make any sense to stop now. I won’t talk your ear off about the particulars, but I’ll just tell you it’s pretty cool. Well, not cool as in good, because we’re talking about oceanic dead zones, but, you know. Scientifically. It’s, um. Interesting, anyhow.

Look I don’t want you to think that I think that environmental disasters are ‘cool’, you know, because I caught a lot of flak for being interested in the kaiju, and like. I’m not— I don’t— Okay. _Hermann_ called me a “kaiju groupie”, and that— I mean. It’s not like that. People don’t make that kind of crack about, oh, I dunno, meteorologists, or, you know, but— but extreme weather conditions kill people every year!

Okay— okay maybe that’s not a fair comparison. The point is, I’m not trying to-to-to, to glorify them. Not— not like that. I didn’t get, y’know, Yamarashi tattooed on my forearm because I’m some kind of, of… _fanboy_ , I did it because that was the first kaiju I— the first one that we studied where I was, y’know, that I was head of the research team.

And I never got to be head of anything before that, y’know? You gotta remember that my older brother was on the varsity football team, when he was a _sophomore_. That just doesn’t happen! And Lorelei— her name’s actually Ferrara but she decided to go by “Lorelei” in middle school, yeah, that’s my family for you— _Lorelei_ was president of her school’s drama club, and my parents never harp on her! Her greatest ambition is to finish her gazebo, but _I’m_ the embarassment?

Like, none of my siblings have even ever _been_ on television, but just because I got excited and wasn’t a stuck-up _twat_ on-air, my grandmother is getting shit from an octogenarian whose greatest accomplishment in the last year is finishing _Wuthering Heights._

God! It just— Hhhh. Okay. Sorry I just. I guess I still can’t get used to it, is all. Like, so much is different, but so much stays the same, you know?

I mean, the first couple of weeks after we sealed the breach, it was like, parties, non-stop. Like, shit, it was like Mardi Gras increased exponentially by a factor of 10, in the streets, in the bars, everywhere, all the time. I guess you must’ve seen that? But I mean, imagine what it was like for me, you know?

Those first few weeks were like a rap video, and I don’t mean like, any 90s hard times kinda rap, I mean like, early 2000s, Bentleys and Cristal kinda stuff, only, instead of the rapper, it was me. Suddenly I was _somebody_ , and, okay, maybe I wasn’t showered with accolades as much as, say, Raleigh Becket, but, hey, it was better than middle school.

Eventually, though, that wore off, and I’m… kinda left back where I started.

Just, older.

Apparently I’m still this big spaz that nobody wants to be around, still an embarassment to my parents, and, just like in grad school, I’m still sneaking into a lab to get stuff _done._

I mean I figure I’ve done enough for the PPDC that they should at least let me use that equipment without having to Ocean’s Eleven my way in there. I dunno what caused Herc Hansen to become like, the king of beurocracy— the BeurocraKing!— but I’m like, you guys blackhawked Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori out of here in a hot minute, bypassing all the passport crap and the red tape and everything, how come you can’t let this slide? And—

Oh.

Yeah.

Sorry, I guess I am over, aren’t I. Jeez, sorry to run so late. Do you have another appointment after this? Oh, okay. Yeah, no, sorry. I was just all over the place today. Alright, um, well.

Next week? Let’s see. Um. Yeah, Monday is still good. Yeah. Okay. See you then.

Thanks, Lakshmila. Have a good one!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do intend to finish this story one day.


	3. The Ramblin' Man

Hong Kong was alive around Newton Geiszler, on his way back to the lot where he’d locked up his bicycle. He turned his collar against the construction dust sifting over most of the city, and thought about snagging an allergen mask from the lab, to wear around town. Everyone else was doing it, so why not?

 

It was no small relief any time he returned to the place where he’d left his bike, and found it still there, rather than seized by the police. Live and learn. And, even if flying down the roadways on a fixed-gear wasn’t really his first choice, and bike parking was practically nonexistent, and the traffic was insane, he felt like he had a handle on it, by now. Anyway, the fixie was the cheapest option since he’d had to send the Kawasaki Ninja he’d originally purchased to the shop. 

 

That was fine, though, he’d been planning on having it repainted _anyway_ , electric blue details instead of the default lime green, and, well, the guy at the garage seemed to know what he was doing with repairs. Newt himself could fix a tire puncture, and other low-grade stuff like that, but the motorcycle needed a bit more work than that. No problem, he was sure it would be _better_ than new once he got it back. 

 

The interchange at Kwai Tsing Road was always a little hairy. It was heavily congested, but he passed the recently re-opened Hong Kong Jockey Club International BMX Park on the way, and smiled to himself every time. Youth he could only describe as ‘punk-ass kids’ crowded the concrete bowls and half-pipes, and he’d find himself reminiscing about the days when the X-Games were a big deal and his greatest concern was whether or not his song request would be aired by Radio Disney. 

 

He’d had a mountain bike, back then, passed down by Dalton, used briefly by Everett who never liked it, shared with Lorelei, until eventually Curie inherited it, painted the majority of the frame with glitter glue, and stuck sequins and googly eyes to the handlebars. 

 

Regardless, even a glittery and googly-eyed mountain bike would probably serve him better than his fixed-gear when he approached the second of three roundabouts where Tsing Yi road intersected with itself, and it was the one to the _slight_ left that he wanted. He could only recall that by remembering that it was the one nearest Rambler Channel, and after that, all he had to do was follow the traffic circle around and double back to get to his hotel.

 

Having forgotten his canteen again, he paid a porter to take his bike up to his room and instead headed into the hotel bar. After all, riding back and forth to Tsuen Wan was a pretty long trip, and he was really, _really_ thirsty. 

 

The Adjoining restaurant was packed with patrons in Western-style suits, and he sat at the bar, watching people proffering their business cards and making the expressive moues of difficult deals. 

 

“Rum and Coke with lime, my man,” he told the bartender, trying for charm even if he was sweaty and maybe a little dusty. “Uh, mh’goi,” he added hastily, then, “And no ice! Mh yiu bing!” 

 

A rum and coke looked a little naked without its ice, but it did have those all-important red straws, and it was cold enough. Initially, the ‘no ice’ thing was a precaution against contaminated water, after viewing some particularly shocking OSCURS model outputs regarding the dispersion of Kaiju Blue within the water column, but even after learning that Hong Kong’s tap water was generally safe, he’d simply gotten used to it. 

 

He’d also gotten used to a Rum and Coke that was precisely that: rum, and a little Coke. It was stronger than what he’d drink in the States, definitely generous in the ‘rum’ department, but he wasn’t a wimp. He could take it. Totally.

 

His throat still felt dry after the first one, so he ordered a second one and pulled some tightly and haphazardly folded bills from his pocket. Eavesdropping on the conversations around him seemed like a good way to better his Cantonese, as well as pass the time, and made him wonder what kinds of dealings were being done in a place like this. Most of what he could catch was along the lines of ‘That might be difficult,’ or ‘I’ll call tomorrow,’ or ‘Thank you very much’. Enough of the people working at the ’Dome, and indeed in Hong Kong itself, spoke English that he’d gotten by for years on that alone. Heck, there were days he didn’t speak to another soul, save for Hermann, and he was crap for conversation, anyway.

 

The second drink went down easier than the first, and all the exhaustion of the day hit him at once. Just that was enough to make him want a third drink, because, _God_ , did his body ache, and maybe a slight buzz would help. And what the hell, with the Breach closed and most everybody dedicated to trying to remember what ‘normal’ was, he didn’t have much of anywhere to be. Not until his travel papers went through, anyway. 

 

He drank to red tape and bureaucracy. 

 

Dragging himself off the bar stool was an effort. His legs felt wobbly from all the cycling he’d done, and maybe a little bit because of the six or eight or more shots of white rum he’d thrown back in rapid succession, tempered with Coke and lime. Well, he felt okay anyway. Just, maybe a little tipsy, now that he’d stood up. It wasn’t like the ‘time to stare at an unmoving point on the distant horizon and do battle with dizziness and nausea’ kind of inebriated, just, you know, a little buzzed. 

 

He waited in front of the golden doors to the central elevator, watching his reflection weave slightly as the indicator showed a vaguely pulsating ‘down’ arrow. When the arrow bottomed out at ‘L’, the doors whooshed open almost silently, like something out of Star Trek— no gauche ‘ding’ in this place.  Even if it meant he’d have to get off on the fourth floor mezzanine and transfer to one of the tower elevators, he made a point of taking the central lift because it went right through a 300,000 gallon, 4-storey fish tank. A poster in the elevator claimed that the aquarium contained over 100 species, and housed some 2,000 individual fish. It was an extremely slow elevator, with soothing music in an oceanic theme pumped in as it rose and descended those four floors, over and over again. Shortly after checking into this hotel, Newt had ridden the cylindrical acrylic lift up and down a few times before some busybody in hotel security got suspicious of him. 

 

At this time of night, there were no other occupants. There were no divers feeding the fish. It was just him in the green-gold light, staring into the waves of colour as the fish drifted by. During the day time, children (and interested adults, what of it) could pick up colourful brochures from the lobby, with highlight species explained in simple, excited language. The English transliteration needed a little work, but he got the gist of it. The brochure also gave a little bit of history on the tank (a _very_ little bit), explaining that the hotel and tank both had been built after the hotel that originally stood on the spot was destroyed in 2016, that it took 4 years to build before the hotel opened, and that the staff was there to make your stay enjoyable. He had his theories about who had the kind of money it would take to embark on this kind of major construction project immediately following Reckoner’s attack on Hong Kong, but, having dealt personally with those very people, he decided to keep his mouth shut on that one. The cuts inside his nose were still healing, after all. 

 

The doors slid open again at floor four, and he walked the rather narrow footbridge over the tank, watching his feet on the clear acrylic and not his reflection in the glass on either side. It seemed a long walk, but eventually, the glass gave way to plaster, and the acrylic to geometrically patterned carpet. If he focused too much on the pattern, he was sure he’d feel sick, so he set his sights on the tower elevator doors, admitting, if only privately, that he was perhaps a little more drunk than previously assumed. Luckily, Tower Elevator 2 was fairly close to the end of the footbridge, so he wouldn’t have to circumnavigate the mezzanine with his legs feeling so unsteady. 

 

The tower elevators were much quicker, and made something of a ‘bong’ noise when the doors opened, which, Newt supposed, was a little classier than ‘ding’. Regardless, his stomach lurched when he reached his floor, and he steadied himself against the bulk of a large potted plant in the elevator lobby. Reminding himself that he was thirty-five years old and also too cool to puke in an earthenware vase, he steeled his guts and shuffled toward his room. Was throwing up in a hotel planter punk rock, or no? He mulled this over as he leaned against the wall beside his door, thumbing through his wallet for his key card. Thank god for the chain that clipped his wallet onto his jeans, too, because the card was really wedged in there and when he finally extricated it, the wallet went slinging away out of his hands to hang pathetically at his knee. He reeled it in and shoved it gracelessly back into his pocket before beginning the irritating process of inserting the key card right-way up, for the exact amount of time necessary to make the green light appear, before removing it quickly and shoving the door handle lest the mechanism lock up again. Red light. He removed the card, brushed it against his jeans, and tried again. Green light, but too slow. He heard the lock slide into place as he braced his shoulder against the door. One more try. He flipped the card over, and slid it in at an angle. No response. 

 

He slumped against the door and studied the red and gold patterns of wallpaper to keep from shouting at the stupid lock because he was better than that. He was better than that. It wasn’t like he had, like, zero self-control, no matter what his grandma’s book club friend might think. He was a fucking rock star, recently back from saving the goddamned _world_ , and he wasn’t going to be defeated by an electronic lock. 

 

Okay. He took a deep breath and let it hiss out through his teeth. He faced off against the door, the theme to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” playing in his head. ‘If I can build a squid cap out of scrap material in under twelve hours,’ he thought, ‘I can unlock this stupid _door_.’ 

 

Failing in that, he would kick it down. 

 

He jammed the key in the lock, gripped the door handle, then whipped the card out and shoulder-checked the door so violently that when it swung open he halfway fell into the room, staying upright only by virtue of his death grip on the handle and sheer, unadulterated chutzpah. A small dial brought the lights on either side of the bed up, bathing the room in a warm, golden glow, and he kicked off his boots, shed his leather jacket, stripped off his tee shirt, and flopped face-first into the satiny duvet, letting the key card drop unceremoniously onto the sheets.  He breathed deep. The room had been cleaned in his absence, and he was probably grinding road dust into the coverlet. Regretfully, he pushed up off of the mattress, resettled his glasses, and glanced toward the bathroom. He should wash his face, at least. 

 

Picking his way back across the room, nearly tripping on his own, recently discarded jacket, he could feel the sweat on his skin and resolved to shower first thing in the morning. Not that it would matter much if he was going to bike back to the ’Dome, but he should at least make an effort, he thought. He paused just outside of the bathroom door, and turned away from it, groping around along the tiled wall until he found the light switch. It was an understated button with a soft glow, and he clicked it once to turn the bathroom light on. The first setting was blue, and he kept his eyes shut, facing the opposite wall, then with another click, the lights turned white, and finally, after a third click, soft yellow. He opened his eyes and saw himself silhouetted in a square of buttery light. Only then did he shamble into the bathroom to perform a few half-hearted ablutions, before finally, finally, turning off all the lights and burying himself between the cool, smooth sheets to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You folks on AO3 might not know this, but it's been a year since I wrote the last chapter of this. The inspiration is BACK and I'm working harder than ever~!

**Author's Note:**

> As you might expect, it will eventually be Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb, but that’s a ways down the road. 
> 
> The first two chapters are first-person monologues, but they’re more like asides in the body of the fic; not every chapter will be that way.
> 
> Additionally: YES I have read the wiki. And, as you might have noticed, NO I won’t be basing my canon off of it. I’m pretty much ignoring the wiki as far as backstory goes. Hope that doesn’t offend anyone. Ignoring the wiki, ignoring the book, ignoring Tales from Year Zero. This work of fiction treats the movie as a self-contained unit.


End file.
